Our first reading for this weekend from the book of Wisdom might easily slip past or through your mind, but it shouldn’t. It articulates what is arguably the central principle of biblical revelation: what I would call the primacy of grace. As I have often said, the Bible is not the story of the human quest for God. You can find that in a thousand books of philosophy or spirituality. Instead, the Bible is the story of God’s quest for us. In the spiritual order, it is always God who takes the initiative, God who sets the tone, God who is the master of the conversation.
